Glad to see you all.

Really, one of the happiest nights of the year when we have youth recognition night, and it makes us feel popular.

So we

never get a crowd like this.

On the rare occasions that we do, it's usually because people are mad about something.

It's a happy night.

So uh good evening all.

Welcome to the Village Board meeting for the Village of Pleasantville.

Today is Monday, January 12.

Uh, we began tonight with a work session at seven, now our regular session at eight.

Our next regular meeting is two weeks from today on Monday, January 26.

Same protocol work session at seven, regular meeting at eight.

Uh, within a matter of a few days, you can pick up an on-demand webcast of this meeting as well as uh past meetings at Pleasantville NY.gov.

Uh our meetings are now all recorded, and uh the same is true for uh some of our other boards and committees.

So Pleasantville, New

York,

Pleasantville NY.gov is the center uh of all of that.

Um so if anyone is wanting to capture the snippet for their moment, they can do so.

So um we're gonna go up to the podium uh announcements just because we have people with captive audience will go through endless dry as dust announcements.

Yeah, everybody come around.

So,

as I think a lot of you already know, we have an annual youth recognition night uh and uh usually around this time of year, and it is a great opportunity not only to invite uh the various groups that uh take advantage of youthful support to come in and talk about what they do, but to give a chance for these young people to come and be recognized, uh, and to remind all of us that almost everything we do here in the village of Pleasantville is significantly improved, significantly uh enhanced, made significantly more efficient and made significantly less expensive through the efforts of young people.

So, as you will see tonight, as is always the case, uh we have a bunch of young people who are honored in more than one category because they are uh volunteers uh for several different things, and as is often the case, people you see year after year after year because these kids stand up and be counted in so many different things.

So uh we're gonna go through each of these groups one by one.

And if there is an adult leader or a student leader of a group who would like to talk about uh the activities that went on this year, you're welcome to do so.

No pressure of any kind.

Uh, but the the first on our list is the Pleasantville farm market, which depends heavily on volunteers.

And

uh I dare say we have some farm market leaders here who would like to say something.

Welcome, Harris and Joshua.

You want to talk about what these kids do for you before we ask.

Um,

I'm Harris.

I'm the director of market operations at the Pleasantville Farmers Market, and this is Jocelyn.

She's the assistant director.

Um, and I think before we introduce our interns, um, it's just helpful to take a step back and just kind of explain like what we do at the market, and in a sense, like how crazy it is what we do in the market.

Um, because every week thousands of people come to the heart of the village to attend the market, and some of those folks live in Pleasantville, but a lot don't live in Pleasantville.

Um, some come from the city, some come from the Upper Hudson Valley, a lot do come from Westchester.

So we're welcoming not only thousands of people, we're welcoming 60 plus vendors, all with their own sales reps.

Um, we're welcoming interns, usually 10 interns on a given Saturday.

We're welcoming adult volunteers, um, live music musicians, kids' event hosts, and we do that 50 weeks out of the year, and we do that outside every single week.

So even if it's snowing, if it's raining, um, you know, these interns are resilient.

They show up week after week.

We don't really get many cancellations, even if the weather's bad.

Um, and there's a lot of markets in Westchester.

Um, and that hasn't always been the case.

I think farmers' markets have kind of gotten a little more hip and a little bit more, you know, as people are paying more attention to what they eat and they want to source better what they eat.

Um, so I think when we started, we were one of two markets, and now we're one of seven or eight.

Um, so there are a lot of markets in Westchester, but we've won best of Westchester for 12 years in a row, which is that happens for a lot of reasons, but a big one is the support from all of our youth interns.

Like, I truly don't believe that we'd be able to keep the street going without them.

Um, so bear with me because I kind of want to share an analogy.

Um, I kind of want to compare the market to a cake.

So bear with me here.

Um, you know, anybody can look up a recipe and they could get some eggs and throw some eggs together and flour and sugars, sugar, and in the end you might have something resembling a cake.

Um, it might kind of taste like a cake.

Um, but why am I talking about cake?

Um, what I'm really trying to say is like anybody could bake a cake, but to really have to focus on each individual ingredient and the quality of them and how you utilize those ingredients.

Um I feel like it's really easy to like kind of look at one individual piece of the cake or the market and not think that it's important, like it's just an egg, it's just a little bit of sugar, like you know, and sometimes it takes a little bit of time to kind of see the bigger picture that it's really all of these small ingredients that are making up something much larger.

Um so I think you know, since there's a lot of farmers markets popping up, I think a lot of these markets, you know, they look like farmers markets, and you know, you might go there and it might feel like a farmer's market, but I think in Platinumville, what a farmer's market is like the definition is way different than any of the other markets.

Um and I only have so much time, so so I won't get too too into it.